Nobel-winning playwright Harold Pinter dies

The man regarded as Britain’s finest contemporary playwright, Harold Pinter, has died at the age of 78.
He had been suffering from cancer; his death was announced by his wife Antonia Fraser.

Pinter won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, as well as a number of other awards during his long career. He was nominated twice for an Oscar in the United States.

His best-known works included The Caretaker, The Dumb Waiter and The Birthday Party, in the 1960s. But he also worked in films, writing The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981).

In later life he became a vociferous campaigner against human rights abuses, in particular denouncing the occupation of Iraq. In 2004 he won the Wilfred Owen Award for a collection of poetry criticising that war.